


Let's talk about our friends who lost the war

by thought



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 20:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2665643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So three Freelancers walk into a bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's talk about our friends who lost the war

So three Freelancers walk into a bar--

Well, no. let's try that again.

So a mercenary AI in an artificial body, a wounded ex-soldier with a being of logic sharing his head, and the woman who is still deciding if her title is Recovery Two walk into a bar. Not together, of course. South's been there since late afternoon, hiding from the trust in her brother's tired smile and shaky hands, a line of glasses spanning the table in front of her in silent toast to her entire goddamn family. Blood, water, vodka. She's just holding up the tradition.

York and Delta come in with the nighttime crowd, riding the now-familiar rush of painkillers and caffeine and hunger up to lean on the bar and charm a cup of coffee out of the over-worked bartender. Tex comes in the back wearing leather gloves to hide the gleaming metal revealed under the broken skin of her knuckles after her latest fight with a brick wall. She's supposed to be meeting a client here. The client never shows, but that's not really important.

They're all aware of each other immediately. Leonard Church chose only the best and being out of the service has, if anything, made them even better. York is the first to move. He crosses to Tex, first. Ironically, he's concerned that south might be a Recovery Agent. The twins dropped off the radar like stones to the bottom of a murky river, and York's a security specialist, intimately familiar with a lack of second chances.

Tex, in contrast, is a pretty predictable element. York's known lots of soldiers like her, lots of former soldiers, too. And Delta feels a tentative sort of kinship with her, uncertain flashes of familiarity, there and then gone again that bleed over into York's subconscious. Besides, Texas is excellent at not getting caught but not as great at covering her tracks. He knows she's not working for Freelancer.

York says, "Of all the gin joints in all the..."

And Tex says, "Are you high?"

York flops down in the chair across from her. His bruised ribs protest distantly. "Healing unit. There are dependency issues. There's also an angry police officer issue. It happens."

"That second one I'm familiar with. Though I don't usually let them get in a hit."

York assumes by usually she means ever, which is actually untrue, but it isn't like Tex is going to open up about her continued integration issues with Omega. She does not, at this point, nor for the entirety of the encounter, realize that York is still running Delta. That when she is speaking to York it's more accurate to say she's speaking to some sort of hybrid consciousness, two minds bleeding liberally into each other peering back at her from one eye. She can't feel Omega anywhere in her head. She doesn't want to think about what that could mean. There are a lot of things that Agent Texas doesn't want to think about.

South is still hiding behind her fortress of bad life choices. Also her hair, which she'd dyed that morning in the motel sink, leaving washed out purple stains across the plastic countertop and thin towels as North chain-smoked his way through the morning news in the other room. He'd taken Theta out sometime during the night, so the day started off good-- South ignored the pervading atmosphere of guilt like she ignored the mold around the tiles in the bathtub. Now she's got half a watered-down drink in front of her, an unread and unwanted message on her datapad, and two of her former friends pretending not to size each other up across the room. Amazing how life doesn't change from 15 to 24 to 33. Lots of people have told South that by virtue of her circumstances her life will never change. Sometimes she thinks they're right. Set the events of today down in any of the past twenty years and not a lot will change.

South examines her options. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. The devil you know, three times over. The devil that tore your family apart wears three different faces.

South can't hear what Tex and York are saying, which is probably for the best.

"Can't believe wash is still working for them," York says. He can't stop shivering and his stomach hurts from hunger and everytime he looks at Texas he gets these weird, shivery ghost impressions of whatever she's talking about. He thinks he's probably imagining it, which is... not ok, but not the worst thing that could happen. York can deal with hallucinations. Delta can't, but he's focused on Tex for the moment. York sort of wants to cry. His eyes hurt. His eyes always hurt, really.

"I'm not," Tex says. "Emotional manipulation is their specialty. Well, The Counselor's specialty."

There's a moment where York considers pointing out The Director's very personal forms of emotional manipulation, but he's still not entirely sure how much Tex knows. He's not sure how much he knows, to be honest. Freelancer is an onion and he figures there's always gonna be somebody a layer deeper than he is. He doesn't have need to worry-- Tex is on the same layer as he is, or close enough, the only difference being she assumes, wrongly, that there's no further down to dig. It might be noted that within 24 hours Tex will learn about Blood Gulch and Agent Florida's mission there, so any observations made at the moment are bound to change.

"We left him there," Tex says. "If I were wash, I'd be pretty happy hunting us down, too."

"We left a lot of people there," York says. Tex smiles like she's going to break every bone in his hands. York meets her gaze head-on. He's projecting, a bit, but let's not pretend there isn't a large part of him that thinks things would've been different if it'd been him in the snow with Carolina and Maine. Tex thinks things might've been different in that case, too. She thinks he'd be dead. There is, naturally, a part of Tex that tries to measure her grief and guilt over Carolina against her grief and guilt over Alpha. She has yet to come up with an answer she likes.

"Reggie got out," she says. "I didn't think he would."

"I'm thrilled," York says quietly.

"Come on," Tex says. "He's good people, for certain values of good. Helped me out a few months back."

"Yeah, well," York mutters. "The phrase 'an eye for an eye' comes to mind." They will both remember this conversation a few years down the road, but neither of them will say anything.

"You were all good," Tex says, wishing she could get drunk. "A good team, before everything."

York, who is also considering a drink --terrible idea with the stunning amount of painkillers running through his system, but it might let him get some fucking sleep--- considers telling Tex that she was part of "everything". Potential reactions ripple out in a hundred different directions in a flash, probabilities flicker past in a breath, and he takes a sip of coffee. Different approach. "She would've had regrets," he says. "About you, I mean. She took care of her team, and I think if she'd realized you weren't excluded from that by choice, she would've done all she could've to take care of you, too."

"I didn't need taking care of, York. Didn’t need to be part of your team to do my job."

"But you wanted to be," he says, and then finishes the rest of his already-tepid coffee because he's not sure how he knows that. Delta has a fare guess, but he's not sharing.

"No offense," she says, "but I saw how quickly your team fell apart. I'll stick to watching my own back."

"You said it yourself," York says, tipping his head back against the chair and breathing through his mouth to force down the queasiness in his stomach. "We were good before everything. We watched each other's backs."

The ice in South's glass has melted and lethargic condensation drips down the sides. She's pushed it aside so there's room for her datapad on the table. Three devils, all of which you know intimately.

Tex does not want to have this fight, but she can't stop herself. "You tore each other to pieces. CT--"

"Who you killed," York cuts her off. "You put the knife in her, Carolina told me the whole thing. You weren't innocent. None of us were."

"I was working with the information I was given. Everything else aside, she was still a traitor."

"I could say the same for any of us," he says. "Doesn't make it ok." York and Delta have been doing some research. York's got one finger in the pie that is ONI3 and another in the Charon Corporation and he's starting to wonder if anybody knew exactly what was going on. He's seen enough to know that whatever The Director and The Counselor thought they were getting away with tucked away on the MoI, someone, somewhere, was entirely aware of it. Perhaps he would be less surprised if he'd known that Leonard Church ran in the same circles as Catherine Halsey, back at the beginning of the war. There are political connections made in board rooms and lecture halls that will last decades, and there will always be an admiral here or there known for turning the other cheek behind closed doors.

York wants her to join him in his guilt. York is glassy-eyed and hollow-cheeked and tilting slowly sideways towards the wall. York is also watching South Dakota like he's ready to put a bullet between her eyes if he needs to. Tex flips him off. "We were soldiers, York. If you're gonna go around feeling sorry for everybody we killed maybe you should'a picked a different pamphlet at the career fair."

Over on the other side of the bar, South stands up and strolls towards the door, hood of her sweatshirt pulled up to cover her hair. She's left a credit chit on the table beside her abandoned glass, still half full. South figures if you're going to make a deal with a devil it'd better be the one making the best offer.

The door closes behind her. York pushes himself to his feet, sways a bit. If anything, the drugs the healing unit had pumped into him before he'd taken off his armour to come here are hitting harder than when he sat down. "I think that's my cue to get the hell out of here," he says.

"Good job, team," Tex murmurs mockingly. York smiles blandly.

"Don't call me, I'll call you," he says. She stays another five minutes after he leaves, just to prove a point.

South goes back to the motel where North is curled up in bed, pretending to sleep. Theta's chip is back in the port at the base of his skull.

"You were gone a while," he says. South goes into the bathroom to pour herself a glass of water.

"Yeah. Had to clear my head."

When she comes back into the room she trips over his shoes and lands face first across her bed. It's as good a place as any, and the world has started spinning alarmingly.

"Yeah, you seem much clearer," he says dryly. "See anything more interesting than the bottom of a bottle?"

"No," she lies. When she turns her head to look at him, she thinks 'I'm going to kill you'. It's not a promise-- at this point South's active malice towards her brother has faded into the background. More a prediction. A certainty. She crawls back to the bathroom. She's got a reason to throw up.

'The devil you know,' she tells herself, and isn't sure what she means.

Somewhere else in the city, Tex thinks the same thing as she slides her helmet back on and is greeted with Omega's blistering fury. York is already on a bus out of town, head resting against the glass of the window. He's asleep, and dreaming. In his dream he's on the edge of an icy cliff, snow blowing against his face as Maine tears the AI from Carolina's head. York runs towards them, thinks 'I'm going to save you', and then dies.


End file.
